I Wanna Grow Old

When the western world plummeted in to recession in 2008, we all knew there were grim times ahead of us. Now we are told that things are getting better, but still people are getting evicted from their homes every day. I lived through some similar times on a more local scale. In the early nineties Finland went through the worst recession of the country’s history. I watched my father’s over extended business collapse, and his world crumble right in front of his eyes. I opened the door to more dept collectors than anybody should have in their teenage years.

Obviously it was not fun, but at the same time it has given me what I think is much more healthy relationship with money. Yeah, it can provide a certain amount of security, but it is not the key to happiness. Never have I seen wealth bring longterm fulfilment. I much rather concentrate in doing something good, than try to make “the big bucks”. Also in the wrong hands it can turn people in to greedy and twisted individuals. But even more so in our society, in large amounts it will create inequality.

And it is this inequality that is getting out of hand at the moment. We have heard it in the news, the rich are getting richer and the poor are worse off. This is not the first time this has happened in the history, in fact it seems the history has a funny way of repeating it self. Since the beginning of what we know as a society existed, every time the inequality has got out of hand, it has ended up badly.

Also my grandparents were born in to a world that was in a middle of a war. This was not a war that was played on our TV screens, this was a war that made millions of mothers bury their own sons, who were killed on a battle field. It crumbled countries, and farmers are still finding mines on their fields after all these years.

Is this really something we want to live through again in our or our children’s lifetime? Can we not learn anything from the past? I don’t have the answers or solutions, but I know by pretending like it is not happening again, we are only making things worse. And admitting we have a problem might just be the first step in doing something about it. So this weeks song, is my way to acknowledge the situation and maybe, just maybe make few of you to think what we can do.

So there you go. This took me much longer to write than I expected 😀 As to the musical side of things, I’d like to remind you that these versions of the songs will be acoustic, and for the album I will have bit more elaborate arrangements.

Anyway, as always if this weeks song hits home, please share it with the world. We might not be the solution, but we can be the little ripple that starts the wave.

J.P.

The author J.P. Kallio is a singer songwriter
To get EIGHT of his songs for free go HERE